By Barry Rubin

Consider five factors that had no effect on the very warm reception given by President Barack Obama to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan:

–While the U.S. government has pressured Erdogan not to visit the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, Erdogan announced in the White House Rose Garden that he would do so. An alleged U.S. ally says publicly in front of Obama while being hosted by him that he is going to defy the United States.

This is not some routine matter. With previous presidents, if an ally was going to do something like that he would say nothing at the time and then months later would subvert U.S. policy. Or better yet the foreign leader would not do so. To announce defiance in such a way is a serious sign of how little respect Middle East leaders have for Obama — and U.S. policy nowadays — and how little Obama will do about it.

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by Ilias I. Kouskouvelis*

Under the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), Turkey’s foreign policy has been associated with the prescriptions and efforts of three men: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President Abdullah Gül, and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. Davutoğlu, a former international relations professor, has been the most articulate exponent of the troika’s ideas, penning perhaps the most authoritative summary of its worldview in his 2001 Stratejik Derinlik (Strategic Depth)[1] and coining its foremost article of faith: a “zero-problems policy” with Turkey’s neighbors because Ankara “wants to eliminate all the problems from her relations with neighbors or at least to minimize them as much as possible.”[2]

This might all be well and good if such words were supported by actions. But Davutoğlu has also described Turkey as a “heavyweight wrestler,” hinting that it may use “the maximum of its abilities” when dealing with its neighboring “middleweight wrestlers.”[3] A survey of Ankara’s relations with these “middleweight wrestlers” reveals its “zero problems policy” to be little more than a cover for the AKP’s reasserted “neo-Ottoman” ambitions.

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by Daniel Pipes*

Recent steps taken by the Government of Turkey suggest it may be ready to ditch the NATO club of democracies for a Russian and Chinese gang of authoritarian states.

Here is the evidence:

Starting in 2007, Ankara applied three times unsuccessfully to join as a Guest Member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (or SCO, informally known as the Shanghai Five). Founded in 1996 by the Russian and Chinese governments, along with three (and in 2001 a fourth) former Soviet Central Asian states, the SCO has received minimal attention in the West, although it has grand security and other aspirations, including the possible creation of a gas cartel. More, it offers an alternative to the Western model, from NATO, to democracy, to displacing the U.S. dollar as reserve currency. After those three rejections, Ankara applied for “Dialogue Partner” status in 2011. In June 2012, it won approval.

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by Michael M. Gunter*

Shortly after the World War II, genocide was legally defined by the U.N. Genocide Convention as “any… acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”[1] The key word from the perspective of this article is “intent.” For while nobody can deny the disaster wrought on the Armenians by the 1915 deportations and massacres, the question is whether or not it can be defined as genocide—arguably the most heinous crime imaginable.

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by Hannibal Travis*

It is well known by genocide scholars that in 1939 Adolf Hitler urged his generals to exterminate members of the Polish race.[1] “Who speaks today of the extermination of the Armenians?” Hitler asked, just a week before the September 1, 1939 invasion of Poland.[2] However, while it is generally agreed that Hitler was well aware of the Armenian genocide,[3] some genocide scholars and historians of the Ottoman Empire have questioned whether he actually made the above statement or even intended to exterminate portions of the “Polish race.”[4]

Still, there is evidence that the massacre of the Ottoman Armenians helped persuade the Nazis that national minorities posed a threat to empires dominated by an ethnic group such as the Germans or the Turks. Furthermore, these minorities could be exterminated to the benefit of the perpetrator with little risk. Indeed, it was German officials who had smuggled out of the Ottoman Empire the leaders of the Young Turk regime, culpable for the deaths of over a million Armenians and a million or more other Christian minorities such as the Assyrians and Greeks.[5] Diverse historical evidence suggests that Hitler viewed the Armenians and Poles as analogous; in several ways, his statement about the Armenians was consistent with his other beliefs and writings.

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by Şenay Yıldız*

Translation of the original text: Ortadoğu liderliğine en yakın ülke Türkiye
Translated by Elif S. Gürbey

Founder and president of the Middle East Forum, Daniel Pipes is well known for his work on the Middle East and political Islam. Pipes, an award-winning columnist for the National Review and Jerusalem Post, writes commentaries and articles about the Middle East in leading media organizations such as the BBC, Al Jazeera, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. After visiting Turkey last month, Pipes, who has 12 books and numerous articles on Islam, Syria, and the Middle East, published an article in National Review Online titled “Talking Turkey.” We talked with him [in mid-December] about his impressions of Turkey and his expectations from the Middle East.

- When were you in Turkey the last time?
I was in Turkey two weeks ago. I visited in 2007 as well. My first visit to Turkey was in 1972. I spent the summer of 1973 trying to learn Turkish while living in Istanbul’s Üsküdar quarter … but I was not very successful at it.

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by Diana Muir Appelbaum*

Supersessionism refers to the belief that Christians have superseded Jews in a new covenant with God. Islam, too, sees itself as superseding all previous divine revelation but, unlike Christianity, which canonized the Old Testament embedding long centuries of pre-Christian history into the Christian narrative, Islam freely erases history itself. But Kemalist Turkey appeared to offer a revolutionary break with Islamic tradition when it established a secular republic on the ashes of the Ottoman caliphate. For decades it has been held up as a model of a modern, westernized, Middle Eastern democracy, that happened to have a Muslim majority. Closer examination, however, reveals substantial “continuity between the late Ottoman Empire” and the republic[1] as Turkish treatment of religious and ethnic minorities exposes an unacknowledged streak of Islamic supersessionism.

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by Daniel Pipes*

The menu for meals on my Turkish Airlines flight earlier this month assured passengers that food selections “do not contain pork.” The menu also offered a serious selection of alcoholic drinks, including champagne, whiskey, gin, vodka, rakı, wine, beer, liqueur, and cognac. This oddity of simultaneously adhering to and ignoring Islamic law, the Shari’a, symbolizes the uniquely complex public role of Islam in today’s Turkey, as well as the challenge of understanding the Justice and Development Party (known by its Turkish abbreviation, AKP) which has dominated the country’s national government since 2002.

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by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi*

Whenever the Israel-Palestine conflict is in the news, too much ink is wasted over moralizing rather than analyzing. Instead of trying to explain what is going on, provide proper context, and predict reasonably what might follow, commentators bicker over who has the moral high ground.

These endless polemics do nothing to help.

A proper analysis should begin by noting that since the start of this year, there has been a significant increase in rocket attacks on southern Israel from Gaza.

Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s attack on Gaza militants during the winter of 2008-2009, proved to be damaging for Israel’s image abroad. There was substantial loss of Palestinian civilian life and the initial Goldstone report accused Israel of deliberately targeting civilians. But the military operation achieved its goal of at least substantially reducing rocket attacks from Gaza.

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by Yoram Ettinger, The Ettinger Report

Twenty eight years of unilateral and multilateral US-led sanctions, accompanied by diplomatic pressure and cyber sabotage, have failed to deter Iran’s Ayatollahs from approaching nuclear capabilities.

Fifty years of proliferated sanctions — since the 1962 military coup in Burma — have been largely unsuccessful in changing policies of rogue regimes.

In fact, the US focus on sanctions and engagement — rather than confrontation — has facilitated Iran’s nuclear drive. It has provided Teheran with more time to develop and acquire critical nuclear capabilities.

Sanctions have effectively eroded Iran’s economy. Sanctions have been ineffective in diverting Iran from its nuclear path.

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by Daniel Pipes*

Is Turkey—due to its size, location, economy and sophisticated Islamist ideology—set to become the West’s greatest problem in the Middle East?

A tumultuous decade has passed since the Justice and Development Party was first elected to office on Nov. 3, 2002. Almost unnoticed, the country exited the pro-Western era started by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938) and entered the anti-Western era of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (born 1954).

The 2002 election followed 10 years of back-and-forth between weak center-right and center-left governments. The 1990s also witnessed the country’s first Islamist prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, in power for a year before his ousting via a “soft” military coup in 1997. In retrospect, that period marked the interim between the death in April 1993 of Turgut Özal, the towering former prime minister and president, and Mr. Erdoğan’s becoming prime minister in 2003.

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By Barry Rubin

“Don’t Panic”

– Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

What should Israel’s policy and priorities be in President Barack Obama’s second term? There will be two key themes: minimize antagonism and cope with the negative consequences of U.S. regional policy.

1. Protect bilateral relations.

Israel’s government must ensure continued U.S. aid; intelligence-sharing; and other forms of cooperation. Obama will almost certainly maintain these programs. This status quo situation is protected by support for Israel in Congress and the Defense Department. Whatever verbal friction or temporary tempests taking place — including signs of Obama’s personal dislike of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — should not change this.

2. Keep Obama from damaging Israel’s situation in regard to the Palestinians.

Obama must decide whether to put a priority on the Israel-Palestinian “peace process,” meaning pressure on Israel to make concessions while the Palestinian Authority (PA) doesn’t keep its commitments and makes no compromises.

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By Barry Rubin

Once upon a time, Arab nationalism ruled the Middle East. Its doctrine saw Arab identity as the key to political success. Some regarded Islam as important; others were secular. Yet there was no doubt that national identity was in charge. All Arabs should unite, said the radical nationalists who ruled in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere, to destroy Israel, expel Western influence, and create a utopian single state in the region.

Instead, of course, the period was characterized by battles among the radical Arab states for leadership. The less extreme ones sought survival through a combination of giving lip service to radical slogans, paying off the stronger regimes, and getting Western help.

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by Daniel Pipes*

A Sept. 14 attack on the U.S. embassy in Tunis left 4 dead, 49 injured, several buildings looted and burnt out, and the black Salafi flag flying above the embassy grounds. In response, the ruling “moderate” Islamist party of Tunisia, Ennahda, forthrightly condemned the incident; Minister of the Interior Ali Larayedh recognized that the government “failed to protect the embassy and we should offer our apologies to the Americans.” Ennahda’s leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, more vehemently condemned the Salafis as a “danger” to freedom and security in Tunisia and called on a fight against them through every legal means.

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by Raymond Ibrahim*

The world’s double standards concerning which peoples qualify as oppressed and deserving of help are staggering. Two recent stories illustrate this point:

First, a report exposed, in the words of the Turkish Coalition of America, “Turkey’s continued interest in expanding business and cultural ties with the American Indian community” and “Turkey’s interest in building bridges to Native American communities across the U.S.” Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., even introduced a bill that would give Turks special rights and privileges in Native American tribal areas, arguing that “[t]his bill is about helping American Indians,” and about “helping the original inhabitants of the new world, which is exactly what this legislation would do.”

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